It is known to provide a shaver or razor that relies on a laser for cutting hair rather than an arrangement of cutting blades. Shavers without blades have fewer moving parts and so wear is reduced, which provides an advantage over mechanical shavers. Furthermore, the use of a laser can reduce skin irritation as there are no sharp objects to contact the skin surface.
Laser shavers work by optical absorption in which hair exposed to a laser beam absorbs the energy of the beam, causing it to be vaporised and/or severed.
Shaving performance is typically measured by two criteria—closeness of shave and irritation of the skin. Laser shavers are inherently good performers with respect to irritation because there are no cutting elements that contact the skin. However, closeness of cut is important and skin contour following is necessary to achieve a consistently close cut and minimise stubble. A mechanical shaver is typically provided with a moveable shaving head to enable it to move relative to a handle so that the head follows the contours of the skin to which the head is applied. A moveable cutting head can be mounted so that it can rotate with respect to the main body or handle of the shaver and/or so that it can translate linearly in a direction towards and away from the handle so that a substantially constant pressure of the cutting head against the skin is maintained. The head may be attached to the handle via a spring mount to bias the shaving head towards a default or neutral position that the head assumes when it is not pressed against the user's skin.
It is known from WO 92/16338 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,993,440 to provide a shaver that employs a laser to cut hair and which uses reflective elements to direct a laser beam into a cutting zone where it extends adjacent and substantially parallel to the skin surface and cuts hairs as they move through the cutting zone. However, the shavers known from both these documents are of the fixed head type and do not follow the contours of the skin.